Alumni Spotlight

You could say that I come from a family of Architects. I am one of eight-children and three of us went on to study Architecture in UCD.

It doesn’t stop there! My own father Luan was also a UCD Architectural graduate. He graduated from UCD in 1942 and went on to study in Harvard, undertaking a Masters with Walter Gropius.

UCD Architects were pushing boundaries not only in the 1980’s and the 1960’s, but right back to the 1930’s when my late Aunt Maureen Hope (nee Cuffe) would have studied there. Maureen was one of the first female Architects to graduate from UCD. Maureen graduated in 1939 and was ahead of her time, not only did she attend College in the 1930’s, but she entered a profession which was largely male dominated. When I look back now I can see how she was pushing boundaries by not only attending College in the first instance, but through her work as an architect. Her design of children’s play centres in Mountjoy Square and near the Coombe in Dublin, was ahead of its time.

It is wonderful that her daughter Gabrielle O’Herlihy and her daughter, Ruth, are both UCD graduates also. Ruth is a director of McCullough Mulvin Architects, another firm with links to UCD. Three generations of female UCD graduates in the family is a very nice continuity.

UCD Architecture has always been well connected to trends in architectural theory and practice outside of the island.

Studying in Richview

I really enjoyed my time studying in Richview. It was a fantastic setting; a beautiful building, bright airy studios, a collegial atmosphere and a wonderful walk through the countryside to get to the restaurant on the main campus! Richview was ¾ of a mile from the Restaurant and this distance from the ‘centre’ of campus meant that, at times, we were very much out on a limb.

It was a wonderful place to study with Prof. Cathal O’Neill using his creativity and imagination to redesign the old masonic buildings to form a satellite campus for Architecture, Urban Planning, the Environment Institute and other activities.

I still visit Richview and enjoyed a visit as a guest critic on a Housing project that formed part of the Masters Programme a few months ago and I am in close contact with the School and its staff.

My memory of Richview was that of bright airy studios with a fantastic college atmosphere. I remember the building itself to be very beautiful and the setting to be fantastic. Back then, the walk to the restaurant on the main campus was very much a ‘walk through the countryside’. During that time, UCD Architecture had a fantastic cohort of staff, sharing their knowledge with us students; Robin Walker from Scott Tallon Walker, Pat Hickey, who was a fantastic studio master, Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell from Grafton Architects, who had a real intensity about their work, Paul Keogh, Derek Tynan and Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey.

We really were very privileged as students to have such wonderful tutors.

Studying Architecture requires a huge commitment as a young student. Our hours of work, and the intensity of our work, sometimes meant it was difficult to get involved with student societies and clubs. We could have done with a better work life balance as students!

UCD Architects are always pushing boundaries!

Temple of Peace!

The ‘Temple of Peace’ was our reaction to the growing concern that existed about then US President, Ronald Regan. During this time, the world was watching his next move. He had already made military interventions outside of the US and there was considerable tension growing between Russia and the US (much like today!)

It was beginning to seem unlikely that the super-powers would pull-back from an altercation and Ireland had a role to play, on the global stage. There was already a growing thread of activism in UCD Architecture, going back to Ruairi Quinn and the ‘Gentle Revolution’, Duncan Stewart in his RAGE years and my own Aunt Maureen Hope (nee Cuffe) a pioneering female graduate in the 1930’s!

A good friend and fellow UCD Architecture graduate John Dorman and I erected the ‘Temple of Peace’ out on the lake as a reaction to what was happening between the US and Russia at that time. It was something which caught the attention of our fellow students, educated them on what was happening between the two super-powers and brought attention to the danger of military proliferation.

Brighten up Belfied Bow-Tie Committee

During Rag-week in 1985 the ‘Brighten up Belfield Bow-Tie Committee’ was formed. It’s first order of business was to place a bow-tie on the Belfield Water Tower. Our rationale for this was that, Andrzej Wejchert, who designed the Dodecahedron shaped Water Tower in 1972, was synonymous for wearing a bow-tie. This was all the momentum us Architecture students needed to put our plan into action! At 3am, during rag-week, the ‘Bow-Tie Committee’ used a combination of design genius, rope and the energy and fearlessness of youth to scale the water-tower and position our ‘bow-tie’ fashioned out of chicken-wire, timber and sheet, under the base of the dodecahedron. Although we felt it was a fitting tribute to its Architect, it did not last very long. UCD Security (who were by now familiar with this motley crew of Architecture students) managed to dismantle our good work! Needless to say, we were not flavour of the month with UCD Campus Security at that time!

Both of these ‘student pranks’ were really our reaction to the soulless nature of UCD at that time. You have to remember back in early 1980’s where there was no students living on campus and there were a lot less buildings then there are today.

We were of a cohort of students who had just come into UCD after the move from Earlsfort Terrace and we were very conscious that as the University had just moved out from the bustle of the City Centre to a bare Belfield campus, there was a need to make things a little livelier! So, while ‘The Temple of Peace’ and ‘The Bow-Tie’ could be viewed as mere student pranks, they really were a deliberate effort to vitalise and invigorate the rather soulless campus at that time.

Since UCD….

Since graduating from UCD, I have gone on a transition of sorts. I moved from Architecture to Urban Planning, completing a Masters in Urban Planning in 1996. My time spent studying for my MA allowed me to think about Irish communities, from a more local level. This would have helped to propel me towards the path of politics, where you see opportunities to effect change, in a very real way. This felt like a very natural transition for me and I now manage to work with both of my passions, as a Lecturer in Planning in DIT and Dublin City Councillor for the Green Party. I am definitely kept very busy but I find that having a foot in both camps (politics and architecture) helps me to navigate the waters more effectively. I am still trying to chase the work : life balance that I did as a student however, I would not have it any other way!

Your School

Useful Links

There is no better training for students than in Richview, the home of architecture in UCD. This space includes design studios, a well-equipped workshop and building laboratory, exhibition spaces and the most extensive architectural library in the country.

Students are also in the most capable hands here, among the expert faculty are Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Royal Gold Medal 2015 awardees Sheila O’Donnell and Professor John Tuomey, both of whom are also graduates of the School.

A gift to the UCD Annual Fund can enable us to award scholarships to students who would typically be excluded from third level education.

Newman is a multi-storey mixture of the arts and social sciences. With lecture theatres that can house up to 500 students as well as smaller spaces for tutorials, students can share ideas with both their peers and their tutors. Whether it be current politics, history or literature there are a wide array of topics up for debate and discussion.

A gift to the UCD Annual Fund can enable us to award scholarships to students who would typically be excluded from third level education.

UCD also hopes to bring Newman in to the future with a regeneration project that aims to provide students with a student centered academic facility that strengthens the disciplines and schools identity.

The James Joyce Library receives on average one million visits per year. Behind these doors there is vast study space amongst hundreds of books and academic journals. The library’s special collections houses the first documentation of the Flight of the Earls, a letter written to Éamon de Valera as well as numerous manuscripts by some of Ireland’s most celebrated writers such as Frank McGuinness, Edna O’Brien, and Maeve Binchy.

The library’s doors remain open to our alumni long after they graduate, with many retaining membership, your support will enable us to continue to replenish our shelves and preserve our rich cultural heritage.

Redevelopment of the existing James Joyce Library aims to provide a range of modern study and active learning spaces with centralised student-facing support services, in addition to cultural, heritage and public engagement spaces.

The UCD Student Centre is home to the UCD Student Union which aims to promote student wellbeing on campus be it mental health, disability rights, mature students or accommodation support. The UCDSU provides free counselling services as well as running life skills courses for students suffering from depression or anxiety.

Each of the seven schools in the UCD College of Science engages in exciting and internationally recognised research. Research includes drug discovery, development and delivery which aim to identify biomarkers, novel therapeutic targets to guide drug development and target medicines toward specific populations.

Gifts to the UCD Annual Fund can enable us to provide scholarships to undergraduate students to study in the field of science which can lead onto working in areas of research that will benefit us all.

The UCD Sutherland School of Law is the largest law school in the country and opened its doors in 2013 but originally dates back to 1911. Notable alumni include Alumni Award winner Maeve O’Rourke (BCL 2009) who works closely with Dr Katherine O’Donnell and Claire McGettrick of UCD on the Justice for Magdalenes campaign.

Gifts to UCD’s Annual fund can enable us to provide scholarships to students from a variety of backgrounds that would typically exclude them from participating in third level education.